Ancient Words The Bible: the key to happiness Psalm 119:1-8 Englewood Baptist Church Sunday morning, Sept. 20, 2009

Transcription

1 Note: This is the sermon manuscript that Ben carried into the pulpit. Feel free to use it in any way to advance the kingdom of God. Ancient Words The Bible: the key to happiness Psalm 119:1-8 Englewood Baptist Church Sunday morning, Sept. 20, 2009 Last week, I began a sermon series entitled Ancient Words. The main thrust and theme of these messages is the power and importance of the Word of God. Next Sunday, I have invited Thom Rainer to challenge in this area. The reason I have invited Thom is because he is the President of Lifeway Christian resources, he is a dynamic speaker, and he has a passion for the Word of God in the local church. Thom is recognized among Southern Baptists as a leading authority on healthy churches. In fact, some years ago, Thom published a book entitled Effective Evangelistic Churches. This book was the product of 2 years of gathering data. He and his team of researchers studied 576 growing churches and printed the major commonalities among those churches. Page 50 reads like this: Among all the possible factors that led a church to evangelistic growth, preaching was clearly the most important element. Over 90% of the respondents indicated preaching was a major factor in their church s evangelistic effectiveness. --Thom Rainer Why is preaching so important in the life of a church? Because preaching represents the voice of God to the people. What people need most is to hear from God? And I don t just say this because I am the preacher and it makes me look important. I would say this of any congregation. The Word of God must saturate the seats in the sanctuary. Throughout history, it has been the communication of God s Word by bold, impassioned men of conviction that has stirred, rallied, and revived the church. And the best way to grow a church is to give people something worth hearing every Sunday. And the only thing worth hearing is Scripture and the clear explanation of it. You didn t come here today to hear about my family, or my life, or my week. You came to hear from God. Jesus said to his disciples in John 15:3, You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. And today, I want to continue the study of God s Word and discuss how important it is in your life. The title of my message is The Bible: What it is, what it does, and what you should do with it. Read with me, Psalm 119:1-8. As we begin a careful study of this majestic psalm, it s important for you to know a few things about it. First of all, it is the longest Psalm in all of the Bible, 176 verses. If you skip back two chapters, you will see the shortest Psalm in all the Bible, in Psalm 117. Psalm 119 is an acrostic,

2 meaning it is an alphabetical arrangement. You see that Hebrew letter just below the number 119. That is the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph. All 8 lines below it begin with the letter Aleph. The Jews often wrote in this way so that they could memorize Scripture and meditate on God s word. We do not know the author of this Psalm but we know that he was a man dominated by the Word of God. In fact, almost every verse in this Psalm contains a reference to the Word of God, and as you can see, it would be a challenge to memorize. It is lengthy. A great story here. There was once a man named George Wishart, a Bishop of Edinburgh in the seventeenth century. 3 Wishart was condemned to death because of some of his behavior and he was sentenced to death by public hanging. While he was on the scaffold, was given the opportunity to request one passage of Scripture to be sung as his last rites. He chose Psalm 119. And before that singer had passed through two-thirds of the psalm, a pardon arrived, and Wishart s life was spared. The story has been told as an illustration of God s intervention to save a saintly person. The truth is different. Wishart was known more for his shrewdness than for saintliness. He was expecting a pardon, requested that psalm to buy more time, and, happily for him, the plan worked. It s a good thing he knew that Psalm 119 was so long. See? Bible knowledge is very important. Let s look today and examine the first 8 verses of this Psalm. The focus of these verses is happiness. How To Find Happiness? V. 1 says, Happy are those whose ways are blameless.. V.2, Happy are they who keep his statutes. Blessedness equals happiness, and this is a universal goal of mankind. You hear parents say this to their children all the time, I just want you to be happy. Husbands use these words to support their wives: I just want you to be happy. Everybody wants to be happy, because happy is fun! This Psalmist is crazy enough to suggest that listening to God is fun and uplifting and encouraging. He suggests that the Bible is truly a roadmap to happiness. For thousands of years, mankind has rejected its instruction. We still haven t learned on planet earth that powerball doesn t bring ultimate happiness, even if you have the right numbers on your ticket. Temporary happiness? Yes. Lasting happiness? No. romance doesn t bring ultimate happiness either. People bounce from relationship to relationship, from marriage to marriage, thinking that the missing link to happiness is a spouse. It s not. Career advancement is not the road to fulfillment. It s fun to get a promotion, but that joy doesn t last. The ladder of corporate America does not end at complete satisfaction. Alcohol doesn t make you happy. Sure, for an hour or longer you will feel weightless and carefree, but when sobriety happens. Guess what? Your problems are still there, and now so is the guilt. 3 This George Wishart is not to be confused with the Scottish Reformer and martyr by the same name who lived a century earlier and was executed at Saint Andrews in 1546.

3 This guy, under the prompting of the Holy Spirit says to the world, I have found it! The treasure map to joy. It s called God s 1) law, 2) testimonies, 3) precepts, 4) statutes, 5) commandments, 6) judgments, 7) word, and 8) ordinances. Those are the 8 terms he uses to describe what I hold in my hands: revelation from the Lord. Happy are those who walk according to it. So What is the Bible? It is the only key on earth that unlocks the door to heaven. The Puritans used to ask themselves this question: What is the chief end of man? And the Answer. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever. This Psalmist says, You will enjoy your life when you enjoy your Bible. It is a key that unlocks the doorway to Jesus Christ. Jesus said it this way in John 17:3: Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. John 17:3 You have probably been told before that relationships are not the key to happiness. That is almost always true, unless you re talking about one particular relationship with One is the living breathing son of God who is, might I add, called the Word of God. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning (John 1:1-2) The reasons we love our Bibles is because it leads us straight to the Son of God. It leads us to heaven where we ultimately want to be. What Does the Bible Do? Let me show you what the Bible does. Look at Psalm 119 and you can see for yourself. 1. It makes you holy. (v.1) Happy are those whose ways are blameless. Isn t it awful to know that you are to blame? When I know that I have hurt someone s feelings and that person is grieving and it s all my fault, do you think that I feel happy? No, I feel miserable. When I disappoint my wife, or my children, or my friends, or my church, how does this make me feel? Condemned. It makes me feel worthless. Nobody wants to live that way. Nobody wants to live in shame because shame makes you want to run and hide. But when you do life, according to God, and learn his instructions and live accordingly, you enjoy life. You don t feel the wrath of God. You feel the favor of God. John writes: This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome. 1 John 5:3

4 The Bible leads us to holiness and holiness leads us to happiness. And so we seek to obey the commands of God. 2. It makes you sincere. (vv.2-3) Now this truth is a bit more veiled, but it s there if you look close. It says this in vv.2-3. I want you to take notice of two key words here: walk and heart. Those two words capture the entirety or whole of your life. Walk refers to your lifestyle the outward, visible portion of your testimony. Heart refers to the secret, inward, seat of your soul. It s the part that only you and God can see. The Psalmist clearly explains that happy people let Scripture inform both their actions and their beliefs. They seek him with their hearts and they walk in his ways. There is no duplicity in them. I remember back when I was a child, my mother would take me to the dentist. I always struggled with that because I thought my teeth looked clean and fine. I wasn t having any pain and none were turning back. I was good. But then, the hygienist would always have me swish this colorful liquid around in my mouth and then spit it in the sink. She would hand me a mirror and she would say, these are your problem areas. That solution was designed to stick to all the filth that remained in my mouth. It exposed me, and it was not pretty. When take the Word of God and you let it swish around in your heart, when your read it regularly and consider its implications upon your life, guess what happens? It exposes you. The writer of Hebrews says that it judges the thoughts and attitudes of your heart. Suddenly, it s not about appearances before men. You see yourself to his standard of righteousness. You see that you are sometimes a liar, an exaggerator, a miser, a prayer weakling, a big mouth, a oneupper, a cheater, a glutton, a sluggard, a faker. We have all played these roles and nobody knew it but God. We have all been satisfied with hypocrisy, and we were fine with that as long as nobody found out. But guess what happens through these Ancient Words? That s right. You look in the mirror and you see the filth and some of that filth, you didn t even know it was there. It was just collecting like plaque on a molar and the Holy Spirit holds up his Holy mirror in your face, and you now have the chance to get clean. And when you feel clean, you feel happy. 3. It makes you humble. (vv.4-5, 8) Look at vv.4-5. Sometimes when we read Scripture, we assume that the person writing is perfect. We think that he has figured it out so that s what makes him qualified to record the truth. That s not the case. This Psalmist was humbled because he knew that he was not always happy. He was not one of those very blessed people because he still had sin in his life. He was acutely aware of his weaknesses and his ungodliness. I think he is saying in this verse almost exactly what the apostle Paul wrote at much greater length in Romans 7: I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do;

5 no, the evil I do not want to do this I keep on doing. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members (Rom. 7:15 23). What Paul is saying is, Life is a struggle! Even though we want to read the Bible, to pray more, to be more generous with our money, to be more forgiving toward our family, we still relapse from time to time. It feels like 2 steps forward and 3 back. Do you ever feel that way? I go through periods as a husband where I play part of Romeo. I do. I mean I write little thoughtful notes and leave them in thoughtful places. I call home just to check in. I soft scrub the bath tub and windex the mirrors. I clean out her car. I offer to cook supper. I schedule a date night and suggest a plan. I have seasons of true unselfishness and I really do begin to think, I got this husband thing down. I should do a conference on husbandry. And then guess what happens? I let my guard down, and I get self-absorbed, and I forget that the world doesn t revolve around me, and I neglect those little things that make a big difference, and then tension comes into the house, and life gets no fun for a while. And whose fault is it? Mine. In the words of Paul, I do not understand what I do. I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. So when this happens, and our sin causes pain, what do we do? We do what the Psalmist does in v.8. I will obey your decrees; do not utterly forsake me. We confess our shortcomings and we ask for help to do better. And I love that second part of v.8, don t leave me by myself, God! I can t do this alone. I need your Word and I need your strength. And that s what you get when you stay close to your Bible. 4. It makes you want to rejoice. (v. 7) It has been said that those who pray for holiness will one day praise for happiness. Look at v.7. All through this Psalm, we are challenged be singing, thanking, rejoicing, and praising God for his goodness to us. That s what the bible does, it provokes praise from our lips which makes us happy. 13 With my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth. 14 I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches. 54 Your decrees are the theme of my song wherever I lodge. 62 At midnight I rise to give you thanks for your righteous laws. 108 Accept, O LORD, the willing praise of my mouth, and teach me your laws.

6 164Seven times a day I praise you For your righteous laws. 171May my lips overflow with praise, for you teach me your decrees. 172May my tongue sing of your word, for all your commands are righteous. 175Let me live that I may praise you, and may your laws sustain me. What does the Bible do? It makes you holy, and sincere, and humble, and happy. It makes you want to rejoice. Now, one more question, I want to handle today. What Should I Do With My Bible? Study it. (vv. 7, 12, 18, 26 27) At least twelve times in this chapter, the psalmist begs God, Teach me. The Christian who constantly studies his Bible will be blessed of God and will feel happy. Look in your Bible and let me read these verses to you. V.7, 12,.. This is why we are taking the 10/10 challenge. Maybe you missed last Sunday s sermon, jump in with us today. Until Oct. 25, we are committing as a body to 20 minutes a day with God. 10 minutes in Bible Study, 10 minutes in prayer. This is doable and it is Scriptural. Surely we only have to be realistic and honest with ourselves to know how regularly we need to turn to the Bible. How often do we face problems, temptation and pressure? Every day! Then how often do we need instruction, guidance and greater encouragement? Every day! To catch all these felt needs up into an even greater issue, how often do we need to see God s face, hear his voice, feel his touch, know his power? The answer to all these questions is the same: every day! As the American evangelist D. L. Moody put it, A man can no more take in a supply of grace for the future than he can eat enough for the next six months, or take sufficient air into his lungs at one time to sustain life for a week. We must draw upon God s boundless store of grace from day to day as we need it.

7